"Beautiful Thoughts" Part 7

October 29th. The final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 62.

October 30th. The words which all of us shall one Day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints, but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines, but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books, but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 63.

October 31st. The world moves. And each day, each hour, demands a further motion and re-adjustment for the soul. A telescope in an observatory follows a star by clockwork, but the clockwork of the soul is called the Will. Hence, while the soul in pa.s.sivity reflects the Image of the Lord, the Will in intense activity holds the mirror in position lest the drifting motion of the world bear it beyond the line of vision. To "follow Christ" is largely to keep the soul in such position as will allow for the motion of the earth. And this calculated counteracting of the movements of a world, this holding of the mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, this steadying of the faculties unerringly, through cloud and earthquake; fire and sword, is the stupendous cooperating labour of the Will. The Changed Life, p. 60.

November 1st. All around us Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amount of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise and thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom a.s.suage and never betray their thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light; not more force, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already there. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 14.

November 2d. Men sigh for the wings of a dove, that they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. "The Kingdom of G.o.d is WITHIN YOU." We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men.

Hence, be lowly. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 30.

November 3d. The kingdom of G.o.d is righteousness, peace, joy.

Righteousness, of course, is just doing what is right. Any boy who does what is right has the kingdom of G.o.d within him. Any boy who, instead of being quarrelsome, lives at peace with the other boys, has the kingdom of G.o.d within him. Any boy whose heart is filled with joy because he does what is right, has the kingdom of G.o.d within him. The kingdom of G.o.d is not going to religious meetings, and hearing strange religious experiences: the kingdom of G.o.d is doing what is right--living at peace with all men, being filled with joy in the Holy Ghost. First, p. 11.

November 4th. The man who has no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, be meek. He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him. It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek man are really above all other men, above all other things. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 30.

November 5th. Keep religion in its place, and it will take you straight through life, and straight to your Father in heaven when life is over.

But if you do not put it in its place, you may just as well have nothing to do with it. Religion out of its place in a human life is the most miserable thing in the world. There is nothing that requires so much to be kept in its place as religion, and its place is what? second? third?

"First." Boys, carry that home with you today--FIRST the kingdom of G.o.d.

Make it so that it will be natural to you to think about that the very first thing. First, pp. 15, 16.

November 6th. The change we have been striving after is not to be produced by any more striving after. It is to be wrought upon us by the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the cooperation of influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature under invisible pressures from without. The Changed Life, p. 21.

November 7th. Every man's character remains as it is, or continues in the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled by IMPRESSED FORCES to change that state. Our failure has been the failure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There is a clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to mould the clay. The Changed Life, p. 21.

November 8th. Character is a unity, and all the virtues must advance together to make the perfect man. This method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true direction. It is only in the details of execution that it fails. The Changed Life, p. 14.

November 9th. We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ are transformed into the same Image from character to character--from a poor character to a better one, from a better one to one a little better still, from that to one still more complete, until by slow degrees the Perfect Image is attained. Here the solution of the problem of sanctification is compressed into a sentence: Reflect the character of Christ, and you will become like Christ. The Changed Life, p. 24.

November 10th. There are some men and some women in whose company we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanct.i.ty. All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, and we find a music in our souls that was never there before. The Changed Life, p. 33.

November 11th. Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium. Note the expression, "cause restlessness." RESTLESSNESS HAS A CAUSE. Clearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal with the cause. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 20.

November 12th. What Christian experience wants is THREAD, a vertebral column, method. It is impossible to believe that there is no remedy for its unevenness and dishevelment, or that the remedy is a secret. The idea, also, that some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been given the secret--as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it--is wholly incredible. Religion must ripen fruit for every temperament; and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway through which the peoples of the world may pa.s.s. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p.

15.

November 13th. Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. G.o.d is a G.o.d of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and never at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law.

Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The Christian experiences are governed by law. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 17.

November 14th. We ARE CHANGED, as the Old Version has it--we do not change ourselves. No man can change himself. Throughout the New Testament you will find that wherever these moral and spiritual transformations are described the verbs are in the pa.s.sive. Presently it will be pointed out that there is a rationale in this; but meantime do not toss these words aside as if this pa.s.sivity denied all human effort or ignored intelligible law. What is implied for the soul here is no more than is everywhere claimed for the body. The Changed Life, p. 19.

November 15th. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without a long previous history. They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too, have each a previous history.

Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but are brought about by antecedent circ.u.mstances. Rest and Peace are but calms in man's inward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 18.

November 16th. Few men know how to live. We grow up at random, carrying into mature life the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little children. And it does not occur to us that all this must be changed; that much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest of the Fine Arts; that it has to be learned with life-long patience, and that the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it triumphantly.

Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 31.

November 17th. Christ's life outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived: Tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid in the grave.

But the inner life was a sea of gla.s.s. The great calm was always there.

At any moment you might have gone to Him and found Rest. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p.

35.

November 18th. The creation of a new heart, the renewing of a right spirit is an omnipotent work of G.o.d. Leave it to the Creator. "He which hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto that day." The Changed Life, p. 57.

November 19th. To become like Christ is the only thing in the world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly, and all lower achievement vain. Those only who make this quest the supreme desire and pa.s.sion of their lives can even begin to hope to reach it. The Changed Life, p. 57.

November 20th. A religion of effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel but never for a man. Not in the contemplative, but in the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality, lies true life; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible things, is man's sanctification wrought. The Changed Life, p. 58.

November 21st. Nothing ever for a moment broke the serenity of Christ's life on earth. Misfortune could not reach Him; He had no fortune. Food, raiment, money--fountain-heads of half the world's weariness--He simply did not care for; they played no part in His life; He "took no thought"

for them. It was impossible to affect Him by lowering His reputation; He had already made Himself of no reputation. He was dumb before insult.

When He was reviled, He reviled not again. In fact, there was nothing that the world could do to Him that could ruffle the surface of His spirit. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 36.

November 22d. Life is the cradle of eternity. As the man is to the animal in the slowness of his evolution, so is the spiritual man to the natural man. Foundations which have to bear the weight of an eternal life must be surely laid. Character is to wear forever; who will wonder or grudge that it cannot be developed in a day? The Changed Life, p. 55.

November 23d. To await the growing of a soul is an almost Divine act of faith. How pardonable, surely, the impatience of deformity with itself, of a consciously despicable character standing before Christ, wondering, yearning, hungering to be like that? Yet must one trust the process fearlessly, and without misgiving. "The Lord the Spirit" will do His part. The tempting expedient is, in haste for abrupt or visible progress, to try some method less spiritual, or to defeat the end by watching for effects instead of keeping the eye on the Cause. The Changed Life, p. 56.

November 24th. The Image of Christ that is forming within us--that is life's one charge. Let every project stand aside for that. "Till Christ be formed," no man's work is finished, no religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task begun? When, how, are we to be different? Time cannot change men. Death cannot change men. Christ can.

Wherefore PUT ON CHRIST. The Changed Life, p. 62.

November 25th. Christ saw that men took life painfully. To some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden of life had been the whole world's problem. It is still the whole world's problem. And here is Christ's solution. "Carry it as I do. Take life as I take it. Look at it from My point of view. Interpret it upon My principles. Take My yoke and learn of Me, and you will find it easy. For My yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon the shoulders, and THEREFORE My burden is light." Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 44.

November 26th. There is a disease called "touchiness"--a disease which, in spite of its innocent name, is one of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point. . . The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old nature is becoming numb from want of use. Pax Vobisc.u.m, pp. 45, 46.

November 27th. Christ's yoke is simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescription for the best and happiest method of living.

Men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar at the best, they make its strain and friction past enduring, by placing it where the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous irritation this sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and sore. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 45.

November 28th. No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must be grown. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 50.

November 29th Christ is the source of Joy to men in the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people share His life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. His method of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue to act. His followers, that is to say, by repeating His life would experience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy, would remain with them. Pax Vobisc.u.m, p. 54.

November 30th. Think of it, the past is not only focussed there, in a man's soul, it IS there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed of the surrounding world are now within him, have become part of him, in part are him--he has been changed into their image. He may deny it, he may resent it, but they are there. They do not adhere to him, they are transfused through him. He cannot alter or rub them out. They are not in his memory, they are in HIM. His soul is as they have filled it, made it, left it. The Changed Life, p. 27.

December 1st. Temper is significant, not in what it is alone but in what it reveals. . . . It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one's guard; IN A WORD, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins.

The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 34.

December 2d. You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your eternal life. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 60.

December 3d. If events change men, much more persons. No man can meet another on the street without making some mark upon him. We say we exchange words when we meet; what we exchange is souls. And when intercourse is very close and very frequent, so complete is this exchange that recognizable bits of the one soul begin to show in the other's nature, and the second is conscious of a similar and growing debt to the first. The Changed Life, p. 30.

December 4th. In the natural world we absorb heat, breathe air, draw on Environment all but automatically for meat and drink, for the nourishment of the senses, for mental stimulus, for all that, penetrating us from without, can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. But in the spiritual world we have all this to learn. We are new creatures, and even the bare living has to be acquired. Natural Law, p. 267.

December 5th. The great point in learning to live the spiritual life is to live naturally. As closely as possible we must follow the broad, clear lines of the natural life. And there are three things especially which it is necessary for us to keep continually in view. The first is that the organism contains within itself only one-half of what is essential to life; the second is that the other half is contained in the Environment; the third, that the condition of receptivity is simple union between the organism and the Environment. Natural Law, p. 268.

December 6th. To say that the organism contains within itself only one-half of what is essential to life, is to repeat the evangelical confession, so worn and yet so true to universal experience, of the utter helplessness of man. Natural Law, p. 268.

December 7th. Who has not come to the conclusion that he is but a part, a fraction of some larger whole? Who does not miss at every turn of his life an absent G.o.d? That man is but a part, he knows, for there is room in him for more. That G.o.d is the other part, he feels, because at times He satisfies his need. Who does not tremble often under that sicklier symptom of his incompleteness, his want of spiritual energy, his helplessness with sin? But now he understands both--the void in his life, the powerlessness of his will. He understands that, like all other energy, spiritual power is contained in Environment. He finds here at last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin.

This is why "without Me ye can do nothing." Powerless is the normal state not only of this but of every organism--of every organism apart from its Environment. Natural Law, p. 268.

December 8th. To seize continuously the opportunity of more and more perfect adjustment to better and higher conditions, to balance some inward evil with some purer influence acting from without, in a word to make our Environment at the same time that it is making us--these are the secrets of a well-ordered and successful life. Natural Law, p. 256.